360 made headway in the US because of the price point and XBL.
The XBone does not have either of these advantages anymore.
Won't have anything to do with nationalism.
allblue said:
|
Great post sir.
Do I have to make a thread on this Nipponophiles?
Have a good read.
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Korean Companies Struggle to Gain Traction in Japan
By ERIC PFANNER
August 11, 2013
TOKYO — Brandishing a new Sony Xperia as she left a mobile phone shop in a trendy part of Tokyo, Nisako Hanawa, a 17-year-old student, explained that she had chosen that brand “because of its cool design and its good reputation.”
Asked about another leading smartphone maker, Samsung Electronics of South Korea, she and a friend exchanged quizzical looks. “Samsung?” Miss Hanawa asked. “I haven’t heard of it.”
Samsung Electronics may be the largest consumer electronics company in the world, selling one out of every three smartphones and one in five televisions. LG, the other giant electronics maker in Korea, has a significant share of TV and washing machine markets in Europe and the United States. But here in trend-obsessed Japan, consumers have not caught on that elsewhere in the world some Korean products are knocking Japanese rivals off the shelves.
Many Japanese explain away the absence of Korean brands by claiming the quality is inferior. “South Korean products are still affected by a ‘cheap and nasty’ image, which remains prevalent among Japanese above a certain age,” wrote Hidehiko Mukoyama, an economist at the Japan Research Institute, in a research paper about Japan-South Korea trade relations.
A Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone. Some in Japan have not heard of its maker.
Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
The evidence says otherwise. Korean-made TVs, phones, washers and cars rate higher than many Japanese brands in independent tests by Consumer Reports, CNet and others. LG TVs have been getting favorable reviews in Japan. A local magazine, HiVi, recently rated a 32-inch, high-definition, 3-D-capable LG set-top ahead of televisions in its category from Mitsubishi and Sharp.
The unfamiliarity is not because tariffs make Korean products costlier. Japan eliminated the import duty on many Korean electronics products, including TVs and smartphones.
But this last holdout is finally being cracked open. In 2008, LG stopped selling its televisions in Japan, but it reintroduced them two years later. Now many of the biggest electronics retailers in Japan, including the No. 1 player, Yamada Denki, and the second-biggest chain, Biccamera, sell LG TVs.
At a suburban Tokyo branch of Nojima, a major Japanese retail chain, LG televisions are displayed prominently alongside sets from domestic brands like Sony, Sharp, Panasonic and Toshiba.
A retail store in Tokyo. Samsung sells one of three smartphones worldwide, but few in Japan.
Kazuhiro Nogi / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Kohei Tomizawa, a sales clerk, said LG TVs were selling briskly, though not as well as those from Sony. LG sets “tend to be more popular with younger people, and younger people don’t buy as many televisions as older customers, who tend to prefer well-known Japanese brands, like Sony,” Mr. Tomizawa said.
The quality myth may be less believable to a younger generation of consumers. With South Korean food and television shows popular in Japan, LG has latched on to the popularity of K-pop music across Asia and beyond. It has run ads for its smartphones in Japan that feature Kara, a Korean group that is popular in Japan.
“I think things have improved compared to the old days, thanks to the influence of Korean popular culture,” said Byoung-Uk Lee, assistant director of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Japan.
LG said it sold about $675 million worth of TVs, smartphones, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other goods in Japan last year, up about 45 percent from 2010.
Samsung also pulled out of Japan in 2007, after failing to make much of a dent here. (The biggest Korean carmaker, Hyundai Motor, also beat a retreat from Japan shortly thereafter.)
But Samsung has come back for a second shot in Japan, starting with its smartphones. NTT Docomo, the largest mobile phone carrier in Japan, has turned to Samsung to try to fend off rising competition from two rival network operators, SoftBank and KDDI.
Those two companies have been poaching customers from Docomo, which does not offer the popular iPhone. “Docomo needs Samsung, and that is giving it an opening,” said Michito Kimura, an analyst at IDC, a research firm.
Starting in May, Docomo plastered Japanese cities with advertising posters featuring the flagship Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone alongside a Sony Xperia A. The campaign, for what Docomo bills as its “summer collection,” is the first time that any Japanese carrier has given such prominence to a Samsung phone.
So far, the results of Docomo’s embrace of Samsung have been mixed. Analysts say Samsung smartphones have been a tougher sell in Japan than in other countries where consumers are familiar with the brand through the televisions and other goods.
Docomo said that under its summer promotion, it had sold 400,000 Galaxy S4 phones through mid-July, but that was less than half the total of Sony Xperia A handsets.
Apple dominates the Japanese smartphone business, holding a 40 percent market share in the first quarter, according to IDC. Sharp, with 15 percent, and Sony, with 13 percent, follow. Samsung has not cracked the top five vendor ranks.
Japanese and Korean news media have reported that Samsung is considering re-entering the Japanese television market. Samsung declined to comment.
To succeed in Japan, Samsung will have a lot of work to do changing a mind-set. But some analysts, like Sea-Jin Chang, the author of “Sony vs. Samsung: The Inside Story of the Electronics Giants’ Battle for Global Supremacy,” are convinced that South Korean companies have a brighter future in Japan.
“Japanese customers favor domestic producers,” said Mr. Chang, executive director of the Center for Governance, Institutions and Organization at National University of Singapore. “No Korean or Western firms were good enough for them, except Apple. But you will find more Korean firms accepted in the Japanese mainstream in the future.”
Joshua Hunt contributed reporting.
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| allblue said:
|
How can you be so willingly blind?
MS is the leading out of the 3 on Arcade and Indy sales. Microsoft has dozens of hit Arcade and Indy hits that Sony and Nintendo combined I believe don't have.
Samsung and Hawei ARE NOT POPULAR IN JAPAN.
Your obsession with anti-Americanism is deceiving your brain. Do you know who is the leading character on Crackdown and State of Decay? Do you know that MS owns MSNBC and it's included in Xbox app store? Xbox pro Apple?
| dsgrue3 said: 360 made headway in the US because of the price point and XBL. The XBone does not have either of these advantages anymore. Won't have anything to do with nationalism. |
You forgot the one year head start.
OT: A lot of big time speculation in here. *yawn*
| Goatseye said: Do I have to make a thread on this Nipponophiles? Have a good read. |
Many American executives who have penetrated the Japanese market say it's not as foreboding as some critics claim.
"My personal opinion is that most American complaints are founded in ignorance," said Steven Peters, senior manager in the civil engineering department at Brown & Root Inc., a Houston builder that became one of the first American companies to land a multibillion-dollar development contract in Japan.
"Most of the people doing the complaining haven't done enough analysis about the Japanese system,
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920110&slug=1469573
Japan is a unique place, and it's not always easy for foreign companies to succeed here. There are many barriers to making it in Japan, from the confusing multi-leveled tonya distribution system to the often-quirky tastes of Japanese consumers. Still, many famous gaishi-kei" (foreign capital") firms have built successful businesses here, with some companies like Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Northwest Airlines having been in the marketplace for so long people often don't realize they're foreign (Northwest has been flying commercially to Japan since 1947). The Japanese have a lot of respect for the icons of America and Europe, and happily embrace brands such as BMW, Michelin, Jack Daniels and Harley-Davidson, all of which have found a great deal of success here, and when a famous brand finally claims "mind share" in the Japanese marketplace, it usually enjoys long-term success. On the other hand, Japan is a very competitive place to do business, with many companies actively pursuing every market, and Japanese consumers are especially demanding of high quality. But the benefits of succeeding in Japan can be enormous: some companies, such as Louis Vuitton and AFLAC, have encountered so much success when they expanded into Japan that it basically springboarded the rest of their company to new heights worldwide.
One of the most incredible success stories of any gaishi firm is that of Coca-Cola. Along with Hershey's chocolate and Levi's, Coke was an enigma to Japanese of the occupation era, a mysterious treat enjoyed by the victorious American soldiers. Over the course of a decade, Coca-Cola overcame the Byzantine, almost Soviet-style regulatory hurdles it had to to face in order to flourish in Japan, and now Coke has something like 90% of the cola market to itself (spikes from Pepsi Star Wars bottlecaps notwithstanding). The rise of Coca-Cola in postwar Japan went hand-in-hand with the popularity of vending machines (there's one for every 23 people here), and Coca-Cola solidified its position in part by taking the lead in developing the most innovative vending machines of any company (including one I saw the other day that let you watch current Coke TV commercials on a built-in LCD screen). Now Coke is somewhat analagous to Toyota in the U.S., a large, smart outside competitor to Japan's Big Four beverage companies (Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory).
Foreign companies provide an interesting alternative to working at more traditional Japanese establishments. Foreign companies in Japan have an image of being more socially progressive than Japanese firms, and women interested in seeking serious careers might consider working for American or European firms operating in Japan. The idea of semi-guaranteed "lifetime employement" came to an end in Japan the 1990s, but it's still common for most full-time employees to expect to stay at the same company their entire lives. Japanese who decide to work for a foreign company generally expect more performance-based pay than they might find at traditional Japanese corporations, along with opportunities for advancement beyond those based on age and seniority, which is still quite rare in more traditional Japanese companies.
http://www.peterpayne.net/2005/11/successful-foreign-companies-in-japan.html
FORTUNE -- The Japanese were using their cellphones to watch TV, navigate with GPS, download music, make movies, pay bills, and check their emails years before American consumers were doing the same. Japan also had touchscreen phones eight years earlier than iPhone -- the Pioneer J-PE01. And yet it is no surprise that Apple's iPhone was the best-selling phone in Japan last year. After over a decade of trouncing any foreign handset looks and talent-wise, Japan's legendary keitai are being given the heave-ho in favor of foreign models.
Take NEC, once one of the world's biggest IT and telecoms firms. Its fortunes have been typical of the other seven Japanese handset makers. After two years of losses and a stock value that has fallen over 90% in a decade, it is selling off its mobile phone sales unit and cutting 10,000 mobile related jobs. Analysts say the firm can't compete anymore with Apple (AAPL) and Korea's Samsung.
What happened? Japanese mobile phone guru Nobuyuki Hayashi believes there are three main reasons Japan has fallen out of love with its own handset makers. First, he says, you have to understand what a colossal and unexpected hit the iPhone was with Japanese women. "The iPhone has been very strong among women from very early on. The original round plastic iPhone 3G series soon become a fashion item for Japanese women who also enjoyed the huge variation of cases and ease of decoration. Then there is the brand loyalty of Japanese women."
Japan had phones just as good-looking as the iPhone. The once popular Infobar candy bar phone even won international design prizes. But the craze for the iPhone, despite lacking all the bells and whistles Japanese telecoms executives thought were indispensable (e-wallet, TV, etc) proved overwhelming.
According to IDC Japan, the iPhone was the No. 1 best-seller for 2012 in both handsets and smartphones. Quite a feat for a phone that the country's ketai-watchers and industry leaders said would fail at the start. Apple now has 15% market share putting it ahead of Japan's Sharp and Fujitsu, which both enjoy 14% of the market according to IDC. Japan's top mobile provider, NTT Docomo (DCM), which does not carry the iPhone, hit back by promoting mostly foreign-made smartphones like Samsung's Galaxy.
But this won't help the attempts to defeat Apple according to Mr. Hayashi who says that the way the phone industry operates here leads to an inferior product. "The phone operators produce almost each and every mobile phones sold in Japan. Even the phones by Nokia (NOK) or Samsung are modified to match the special requirement by the operators to include features that operators believe are important such as e-wallet, One-Seg TV receiver and wide range of special services by the operators," he says.
"iPhone still is about the only phone in Japan which is sold unmodified (i.e. just the way the manufacturer has it produced)."
He adds that such tinkering makes the phones -- based on Android (GOOG) -- too feature-heavy, too complicated, and unstable battery drainers.
Thirdly, he suggests that the software that Japanese add to foreign phones and that is found in domestic-bred devices is no match for Apple's or an unadulterated Samsung. "As Steve Jobs once said, Japanese manufacturers' biggest mistake is they didn't realize how important software technology has become. Most of the executives at Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers were hardware engineers, and they don't get the importance of software or how software business works." he says.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/06/how-the-iphone-conquered-japan/
TOKYO - Suketaka Kawazu, a 25-year-old salesman for an air cargo company, sips his hot chocolate as testament to the brilliance of McDonald's marketing.
After lunch at a Tokyo McDonald's, he said he thinks the hamburgers actually taste better at MOS Burger, a Japanese competitor. And he can't identify any particular warm feelings about McDonald's or its image.
"I guess it's American, if you think about it," he said, shrugging. "But I don't think about it."
Still, he faithfully eats at McDonald's at least once a week.
It is on the basis of this loyalty that McDonald's has embarked on a massive expansion effort in Japan that's expected to see the chain grow from 2,000 restaurants to 10,000 in the next 10 years, likely squashing competition and becoming a model for McDonald's growth worldwide.
You could call customers like Kawazu somnambulant and perhaps ready to be wooed away. But the truth is that after 25 years in Japan, the Illinois-based fast-food giant has achieved marketing dominance. McDonald's is the restaurant you go to for a fast hamburger meal.
"If you're thinking of doing something in the fast-food industry, it's not a good idea to go with hamburgers," said Kuniyoshi Akima, sales manager of Dairy Queen.
Dairy Queen officials have replaced hamburgers with pita sandwiches on the menu at its 100 Japanese stores because of competition from McDonald's.
In the United States, McDonald's trend lines have been as limp as a day-old French fry, with sales at restaurants that have been open at least a year declining. That reportedly has spurred the company to propose a big price-cutting campaign. .
McDonald's U.S. troubles, however, make its success in Japan stand out more.
The world's biggest restaurant operator, McDonald's claims 60 percent of Japan's $5 billion hamburger market. It accounts for 10 percent of beef consumption in Japan and 1 percent of restaurant sales. McDonald's chief in Japan, Den Fujita, is aiming for 5 percent.
With 2,000 stores, McDonald's is within easy reach of most consumers downtown, at the train station or in the suburbs. To get to 10,000, it is pushing into smaller spaces and more creative locations, such as schools and factories, just as it has done in the United States, where McDonald's are tucked into Wal-Marts and Amoco gas stations.
McDonald's is found in landmarks such as Tokyo Tower, an Eiffel Tower-like observatory.
A big part of the company's expansion will come from agreements Fujita made with two Japanese oil marketers to combine McDonald's with gas stations. The move is significant because self-service gasoline comes to Japan next year.
The credit for McDonald's success in Japan goes to Fujita, 70. He brought McDonald's to the country in 1971 and runs it as a joint venture with the U.S. parent, which splits the investment and the profits.
Fujita, who has written six business books runs McDonald's by his will. He meets with McDonald's officials four times a year, but they give only advice.
Nearly all his stores are company-owned because Fujita does not want to lose control of marketing decisions. The only franchising is through an incentive system for loyal employees.
In Fujita's latest book, "Winning is Everything," he advocates American-style, top-down management over the Japanese bottom-up, consensus-building system.
"All the knowledge and experience top executives accrue is for decision-making," he wrote.
For example, two years ago the company began aggressively cutting prices after it ran a hamburger promotion and saw sales jump by 20 percent.
Taking advantage of the company's buying power and the strength of the yen, Fujita cut the price of a hamburger from 210 yen ($1.75) to 130 ($1.08). A special value meal of a hamburger, medium fries and medium drink is $3.33. At MOS Burger, where the drink and fries are smaller, a comparable meal is $4.08.
These days, the yen's value is dropping, and that is causing a headache for Fujita. He buys his potatoes and beef in dollars from the United States, so if the dollar, trading above 120 yen, hits the 130 mark, Fujita may have to raise prices.
But judging by McDonald's success, the toughest decision has been made in shaping the chain's image.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970226&slug=2525905
You're talking about cases of success. Very few.
Majority of Japan neighbors hate them because of their snobbish attitudes towards them. If you had read my earlier post you would see a pattern.
Korean, Chinese or even American companies rarely get a shot at success in Japan. You think their ultra-nationalists ideas died with the atomic bomb?
I'll indicate you some good read on Japanese papers(english vers) to see it for yourself.
| Goatseye said: Do I have to make a thread on this Nipponophiles? Have a good read. |
Mr Chang is an international authority now?
Japanese electronic brands have a long history here. Of course it's gonna be hard to beat them.
Similar to how Europeans don't buy American cars.
Apple managed, Samsung didn't. How the hell is that nationalism? They're only nationalistic against Korea? But yet Korean cosmetics and TV dramas are super-popular here.
Honestly, very poor choice of a "proof" and it shows some desperation.
List of countries by number of McDonalds:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_mcd_res-food-mcdonalds-restaurants
Japan 2nd by far (why no rejection?)
List of most popular theme parks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amusement_park_rankings
Japan's Disneylands no. 2 and no. 3 (why no rejection?)
Plus Korean products (not phones), Apple computers, Windows OSs... why are they so successful in Japan?
Heck, why do the Japanese travel abroad so much? Practically every Japanese person has been abroad and is interested in other cultures, much more so than in the US.
Whatever companies struggle in Japan have other reasons for struggling, cultural or historical.
Again, it's NOT nationalism. You can't explain some companies struggling and others not with nationalism. "Selective nationalism" makes absolutely no sense.
You have absolutely no clue of what you're talking about. Drop it.
No troll is too much for me to handle. I rehabilitate trolls, I train people. I am the Troll Whisperer.
Goatseye said:
How can you be so willingly blind? Samsung and Hawei ARE NOT POPULAR IN JAPAN. Your obsession with anti-Americanism is deceiving your brain. Do you know who is the leading character on Crackdown and State of Decay? Do you know that MS owns MSNBC and it's included in Xbox app store? Xbox pro Apple? |
Did you quote the wrong person? Because you seemed to have answered nothing with your post especially the last paragraph. My post in its entirety is to call OP a hypocrite, you cannot accuse other regions of bias while xbox's success in america for the most part is fueled by patriotism and protectionism.
Anti-american? You seem to be implying that there is something fundamentally so great about america that even remotely criticizing its hyprocrisy is deemed as being antagonistic to it. I don't hate America, it is a great land, some great scholars that I admire originate from there. I just like to take every opportunity to dish out that stinking hypocrisy in your government and a small minority of the population who has their heads in the cloud.
Is everything fair and just in America? The whole presidential veto thinig in apple vs samsung case screams protectionism. I wonder what happened to those China hacking america headlines after the whole NSA fiasco?
Explain.
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Troll_Whisperer said:
Mr Chang is an international authority now? Japanese electronic brands have a long history here. Of course it's gonna be hard to beat them. Similar to how Europeans don't buy American cars. Apple managed, Samsung didn't. How the hell is that nationalism? They're only nationalistic against Korea? But yet Korean cosmetics and TV dramas are super-popular here. Honestly, very poor choice of a "proof" and it shows some desperation.
List of countries by number of McDonalds: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_mcd_res-food-mcdonalds-restaurants Japan 2nd by far (why no rejection?) List of most popular theme parks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amusement_park_rankings Japan's Disneylands no. 2 and no. 3 (why no rejection?)
Plus Korean products (not phones), Apple computers, Windows OSs... why are they so successful in Japan? Heck, why do the Japanese travel abroad so much? Practically every Japanese person has been abroad and is interested in other cultures, much more so than in the US.
Whatever companies struggle in Japan have other reasons for struggling, cultural or historical. Again, it's NOT nationalism. You can't explain some companies struggling and others not with nationalism. "Selective nationalism" makes absolutely no sense.
You have absolutely no clue of what you're talking about. Drop it. |
Please do not misquote me.
Who are you also? International authority now?
Most Korean appliances are not well regarded there also not just phones.
Poor comparison with American automobiles in Europe. Europe's urban life does not allow American extra sized vehicles to freely roam. Plus the vehicles disregard for fuel consumption is another reason. Futile comparison.
Plus Korean products (not phones), Apple computers, Windows OSs... why are they so successful in Japan?
Do they have a similar Japanese reliable alternative to compete with them?
Do they have to McDonalds and Coca Cola?
Practically every Japanese person has been abroad and is interested in other cultures, much more so than in the US.
You must be joking right?
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